


friend like that, who needs an enemy

by StripySock



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Drunk Sex, First Time, M/M, Post-Canon, Sexual Tension, The Buds are Back in Town, beer and adrenaline made them do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: “Two dead Santas and a heroin epidemic,” Exley says, thumbing through a little crisp book now. “The things Christmas is made of.”
Relationships: Ed Exley/Bud White
Comments: 12
Kudos: 23
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2020





	friend like that, who needs an enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lenore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/gifts).



> Love this pairing and it's a pleasure to write this NYR for you Lenore.
> 
> So much thanks to asuralucier for time and patience on this one! All mistakes that remain are (as always) my own.

It was beginning to feel a little like Christmas. Drunk cell was filling up, thanks to the after Thanksgiving slump, a fat man in a red suit on every corner, sweltering in red fur - Coca Cola's marketing team hitting a home run as an executive board present, and a tinge of overtime expectation in the general departmental air. It's a cocktail about as potent as the whisky/soda mix pressed into Bud's hand as he walked through the door, which sports a deal more whisky than it should and has maybe French kissed a club soda once.

Mahon is handing out the drinks, glassy-eyed and drunk already, a litter of beer bottles on his desk. They’re perched on top of incomplete paperwork, beer rings obscuring the complainant's name. Bud toasts him, but only a little, Mahon is a good drink mixer and a shitty cop. "This signed off?" he says, looking around, the duty sergeant is absent from his post, and there's only three or four folk milling around the room, looking nervous.

He can hear the seven empty beers in Mahon's chuckle. "Bud," he says, "Jesus, they've done a number on you. Time was you wouldn't ask that."

Bud considers the glass in his hand and Mahon's face in front of him and the prospect of smashing the two together. But the paperwork would be a pain and there's a rat by the door who looks as though he might be holding a seltzer. Bud puts a lid on the red rage that always seems to sit somewhere underneath his skin, and knocks back half the drink. This time last year, Mahon’s jibe wouldn’t even have registered. A well honed instinct tells him there’s eyes on his back.

Exley is leaning on the side of the door frame, cool as you please, pressed suit straight off a shop mannequin, wire frames perched on his nose, eyes remote behind them. It's a calculated pose, as staged and precise as everything else about him, and after all this time, Bud still kind of wants to knock the look from his face, tighten that tie a little bit until Exley lost his composure. Bud's fingers itch with the desire, there's an ache in his jaw from the irritation that crawls under his skin just looking at the man.

Exley incites a recklessness in Bud just by being alive and within two yards. But he's a year older, a year wiser, and fuck it, Exley's one of the good guys, or at least one of the grey guys. It's not Exley's fault that the way he looks provokes punches, it's not even his fucking fault that Bud White has travelled five hundred miles to see him again, to feel the little simmer of too-similar rage that reminds Bud he isn't yet dead.

Exley on his part is inspecting his fingernails.

"Manicurist off sick?" Bud says, a familiar wave of disdain trickling through his guts. A year in Arizona has left him unaccustomed to LA and it’s superficial polish. A year without Exley has left him weak.

Exley looks up from his hands, fumbles in his pocket for something. "Bud," he says, a non-committal greeting. "Shaken the sand out of your boots? If you haven’t drank too much, there's that bust in the Old Town later on." There's a bulge at Exley’s hip—a gun, the usual hard metal surface underneath the velvet politician's glove. Bud's felt his fingers scrabble off both, a time or two, last time Exley fell apart like wet paper in his hands, he was held together with venom, facts and the indisputable will to endure.

“Two dead Santas and a heroin epidemic,” Exley says, thumbing through a little crisp book now. “The things Christmas is made of.”

Bud can’t disagree. There’s Arizona dust on his boots, and in his mouth. Back in Arizona, Christmas is ham and apple, aspic jello in holly moulds, a sweating man in a white beard, handing out presents before he hits up the store for a handle of vodka. It’s just about as close as he’s ever got to seasonal spirit. “Christmas raid,” Bud says. “How much overtime?” He doesn’t need to jerk his head at the men around them, Exley has eyes. Eyes and a pinched little look on his face underneath those ridiculous glasses.

Exley takes the glass out of his hand, surveys the inch left of whisky, knocks it back, mouth on the rim where Bud’s had been. “You’re not on the payroll Bud. No overtime. For the love of the City of Angels, right?” He grins, all teeth, and heads back to his office. Bud can hear the cough from where he stands, smiles a little. Exley’s too used to the good stuff. Always a pleasure to remind him of the stuff that’s shit.

Mahon regards him sourly over the top of beer number eight. “Back to being Exley’s lapdog?” he says.

Bud doesn’t bother answering. There’s a certain satisfaction to being a free agent, even if he’s still harnessed to a police yoke. Exley’s clattering back down the corridor, vest on, keys tight in his hand to stop them from jingling. Bud takes them, Exley’s fingers opening automatically, frown on his face like he didn’t mean that to happen.

“So,” Bud says, tosses the keys in the air just to irritate. “Does ‘significant information’ get me a place to stay?”

Exley’s brow doesn’t relent. “For as long as you’re pertinent to the investigation, Officer White, you can take my spare room. I understand the pay packet in Arizona is slight.” There has never been a moment in as long as Bud has ever known him, that Exley hasn’t added a sting to every concession. 

There’s one red light in Bisbee, Arizona, and one drunk who runs it every day. Sheriff Jones told Bud they didn’t bother arresting the perp “gives him attention son, Henry Rose don’t need none of that.” 

Bearing that in mind, there’s a good reason that Bud finds kicking a door in to be moderately enjoyable. There’s a certain satisfaction to heeding Exley’s taut nod and busting through a door so thin it might as well be plywood. Less satisfaction in digging up a patio to find nothing but a caved in hole where money might once have rested. Less still in Exley’s still face, trying to be stone, attaining only owlishness as he pushes his glasses back up and peers through a slim Rolodex like he wants to salvage something from this hit.

Bud drove five hundred miles with a name in his pocket, salvaged from a prison confession given up by a man on his deathbed like he thought that choking out words of contrition would smooth his path into the next life. Under the patio he’d said, John Carnet, the mobster’s accountant’s accountant, who’d given up and scurried when Dudley Smith went under, in jail on an unrelated charge. 

There’s a woman inside with her face set and hard, ruby ring on a bony finger that she twisted round as she spoke to them, eyes steady and clear, lying as much as her husband’s account books ever had. There had been space under that patio, maybe enough for a body as well, but to hear her tell it, she and John had lived a life so irreproachable that the sainthood would be in the mail.

“Back to the station?” Exley says, like he thinks that’s where Bud would want to be. He could mean it for the paperwork, Bud knows he means Mahon and his crew, a slow integration back into the flow. Exley probably thinks Bud’ll get the shakes if he goes too long without breaking a nose.

“You keep whisky in the house?” Bud returns. 

“It’s a house, not a bar,” Exley says, frowning, hands on the wheel, two and ten position, like a stopped clock right twice a day. 

“So no drink,” Bud says mildly. “No food either I take it. Exley you do Christmas cheer like nobody else.”

Exley doesn’t say a word, lips tight, like he’s folding them around a cuss word. Riding in the car, it’s like old times they never had, so familiar that Bud knows without thinking where Exley turns off, dull glint of lighting outside a Chinese takeout place, liquor store next door. Exley thumbs through his wallet, offers Bud a ten, and Bud laughs in his face and takes it. If this is Exley’s attempt to flick him in the raw spot of a county salary, it isn’t working. 

It takes less time for Bud to decide on middle-shelf booze than it does for Exley to fumble around a beef and broccoli combo. Bud amuses himself in the meantime by snapping the cap off a beer and throwing it into the darkness. There’s a cat yowling somewhere in the night, a little man in a brown coat hanging out in the sheltered corner of the liquor shop, looking at Bud and then away as though he can’t make up his mind. Bud watches him impassively, sucks in the sharp air, just a little night-time coolness now. 

Whenever Bud had thought of Exley, of those few frantic days, it was always with the same haziness of a night too long on the booze, existing but not really, a sodden blur of time with only Exley standing out, the idea of him truer than the reality. In those thoughts, Exley is always wearing a suit, always immaculate, always one step away from dying in a rain of bullets. It seems wrong to see him so clearly, balancing takeout containers as he jerks his chin towards Bud. Intimate almost, to see him with his jacket off, a little sweaty from the hot steaminess of the Chinese restaurant. 

The same curious sense of closeness doesn’t lessen when they’re back at Exley’s house. As much as Bud had ever considered it at all, he’d have thought Exley slept in a bunk at the station, tucked hospital corners on his sheets, or perhaps crawled back into his box to rest off the extra mileage clocked up on his odometer. 

The strangeness doesn’t lessen as Bud follows Exley into the kitchen, even if the room is what he’d expect. There’s not a solitary grease spatter near the stove, the icebox is empty when Bud opens it to put the beer in, a lonely jar of pickles on one shelf, and it’s almost embarrassing when he opens the silverware drawer to find the one dissonant note in the sterile neatness of the apartment - a jumble of mismatched spoons and two forks. 

“Not big on company?” Bud says. It comes out a little sour. What had he expected - the inevitable blond politician’s wife, tucked in the third room to the right?

Exley doesn’t seem to notice Bud’s tone. “Long hours,” he says, briefly, opens a beer with a casual jerk of his wrist that doesn’t fit with the rest of him. “Crime doesn’t sleep, White.”

It’s straight out of a B-list flick. Dedicated cop, in the city that only sleeps so it can dream up better ways to kill.

Bud fishes in his jacket, takes out the pack of cards that he’s carried for years, so worn and greasy that he pretty much knows which card is which, dealing luck the only thing that carries the day, and throws them on the table, next to the fifth of scotch and the two beers he left out and ready.

Exley hovers near the door, undecided - when he walks forward, Bud knows he’s won. Dealing is simple, dirty Texas hold’em, and Exley is way too practiced at scooping them up, and holding all his cards close to his chest like he does with everything else. Poker face is more than just a mask, Exley probably taught himself to play with a mirror as his opponent, like a one man band doing what he thought a man would do. Exley is, after all practiced and smooth, fingers slipping over the cards, playing cautious and counting, numbers ticking behind his eyes, all calculation. Bud doesn’t remember where he learnt to play himself, but he knows he’s going to win. Doesn’t matter what the deal is, he knows his cards.

The score racks up, matchsticks on the table, replaced by bills, replaced by beer caps thrown in to sweeten the pot, drinks bet without the intention of collecting, and under it all a thin thread of tension, an awareness that Bud doesn't have a name for, but it ratchets up with every hand, his mouth so dry he needs the beer to wet it, can't look away from the way Exley deals.

The thin, high sound of a woman’s scream outside the house acts like a cattle prod on Bud’s nervous system. He breaks his contemplation of Edmund Exley’s give-away swallow on a full house, and the disruption it causes in Bud’s internal equilibrium. Returns to a more natural state of affairs. Exley seizes his gun from where he’d discarded it on entrance, a breath behind Bud as he charges for the street. This, at least has complete clarity. There is good, there is evil, there is Bud White with a Glock of justice. It’s not the ambiguity of watching Exley brood on a bad draw, and feeling, in the second, as with Lynne, the useless urge to touch, to smooth out those lines.

It’s a relief to charge into the street, even if the second Bud hits outside air, he becomes aware, suddenly, of just how much he’s drunk. It doesn’t worry him, he’s hit ten for ten on targets, when drunker than this. Exley on the other hand has been matching him beer for beer, and the last time they were in a shootout, Bud walked away with a useless left arm. He hesitates, and Exley overtakes him, gun out, shirt tails untucked, and fuck yeah, he’s drunk. There’s nothing out there, and all that adrenaline, all that heat it churns around in Bud. There’s nowhere for it to go, except the formless rage he feels against Exley, as he follows Exley back into the house, and he’s feeling the kind of thing he hasn’t felt in years.

It doesn’t surprise him, not really, when Exley grabs him, his fingers more used to triplicate forms than guns, but still sure enough in throwing him up against Exley’s front door. 

The blood in Bud’s veins has gone haywire, it feels like, a sharp rapid beat that leaves him wanting to suck in more air than he can get in one inhale. Where Exley’s touching his wrist, he can feel a shiver start, race up the skin of his arm, down his spine and settle deep and heavy into his gut. He is, suddenly, surprisingly, hard. It’s a fact that his mind struggles to reconcile and his cock seems to accept. Exley it seems, like Bud’s cock, isn’t having much of a problem with the idea, looks like he want to unhinge his mouth and swallow Bud whole, and Christ, that gives Bud a few ideas utterly incompatible with the light of day or the dignity, however scant, of the police force.

Exley lets go of Bud’s shirt, steps backwards into the hallway, opens his hands wide and empty. _I mean you no harm_ the pose says. In any other man it would be submission, a placation. Exley makes it look shit-eating. The light in his eyes, is half drink, and half a familiar madness that Bud last saw when watching Exley watch him, throw a man out a window. Exley’s back in the kitchen now, ten steps away, still fucking watching Bud with a look that is daring him to open the door back up and walk out into the night.

Bud doesn’t. He hasn’t turned tail once since he was nine. Walks forward into the kitchen with their scattered cards and bottles waiting for the game to resume. Bud snags his abandoned beer to neck the rest, realizes too late that it’s Exley’s, thinks suddenly, absurdly of Exley’s mouth on his whisky glass as well, tit for tat. Exley is watching him, raising his hands slow and deliberately, pulling at the tie around his neck, dismantling the structured neatness of it, threading the silk of it through his fingers before he throws it, without ceremony into the center of the table on top of what had been their poker pot. 

That, Bud realizes, without even having to think about it, is his cue. If he hesitates, if he thinks about this, he’s lost. To his own credit, he has never lacked in decisive action. Touching Exley is hard, impossible almost, he has to wind both his hands in Exley’s shirt and jerk him closer, his heart still hammering in his chest from the adrenaline. He’s done most of the work, he isn’t surprised when Exley closes the deal, mouth on his, tilting up the negligible inch distance between them, breath whisper-hot for all of a second.

It’s disconcerting, all of it. Exley’s mouth is hard under his, lips thin, entirely ungiving for a second, parting just a little, enough for Bud to recover, for his mind to catch up with his body, and to kiss Exley properly. A phrase that will never not seem like madness in his head. He does it anyway, even if it’s a little like _getting_ kissed, Exley’s hand first on his jaw, then his neck, the tilt of his head, and hard press of his tongue. For all of thirty seconds after that, Exley does nothing much at all, agreeable perhaps, turn of the head for a better angle, opens his mouth a little more. 

After that, it’s as though Exley has the lay of the land, something to draw his battle plans on, chases Bud’s tongue back into his mouth, hard and vicious, just enough to make his intentions clear. Whatever Bud had expected, thought, half formed considerations, melt under the way that Exley has his teeth sunk in Bud’s bottom lip, sucking it in until it feels sore and strange, every throb of it connecting with his belly.

Somewhere along the way, Exley’s stepped forward, fully into Bud’s space. Bud’s hands are caught between them. Exley’s hands are busy, one at his waist, pulling Bud’s shirt up, the other on his shoulder, fingers pushed through his shirt into the meat and skin below. Bud follows his lead, breaks apart from the kiss for a second, to crawl one hand up Exley’s too stiff shirt to his neck, vulnerable with his tie gone, twitches the top button off, to reveal Exley’s nervousness. 

Exley’s mouth is close enough to his still that when Bud opens his mouth to talk, their lips brush, he can feel his hand spread over the bump of Exley’s neck, the soft swallow of it. Is suddenly aware that if he’d been hard before, he’s achingly hard now. And that Exley, indisputably male, is pressing against his hip in turn. 

Bud turns his grip on Exley’s throat into an almost caress, grips the back of his neck, warm skin under his fingers, presses his mouth against the stretch of skin, the exposed bit of Exley’s neck, just the smudge of his mouth, the press of his teeth, nothing more. Feels Exley swallow again, ragged intake of breath. Bud feels like he’s pushing through a fog, only thing real in the mist is himself and Exley. It’s dark, like it was back at the Sunset Motel, and that’s maybe because he’s closed his eyes, an artificial dusk. 

It takes three seconds to walk Exley, unresistingly to the solid oak table that’s the one permanent addition in a kitchen full of emptiness and inessentials. To push him against it, step between his legs and kiss him again, properly, Exley’s tongue pressing back against his own, scatter the cards under his hands, and feel his fingers, useless and heavy, pull apart Exley’s buttons, his belt, and all the while, the sane part of him is running its mouth in the back of his mind - _what the fuck are you doing son_. It sounds, after all these years, uncommonly like his father.

As all the years have given him practice in doing so, Bud ignores that thought.

Exley for his part, pushes Bud away with a heavy hand, so he can shift a little, and then with an economy of motion, he’s pulling at his waistband, no shame at all. Exley’s up against his kitchen table, but he doesn’t seem to feel that, his own eager fingers snaking down his pants, gripping himself through his briefs, seeming to ignore the sudden seismic changes that are cracking Bud’s world. 

They’re already within one degree of separation of each other, this is just closing the gap. At first it doesn’t feel like himself, when Bud looks down, sees first his hand on Exley’s thigh, then on his dick, hot even through the cotton of his underwear, feels like something he’s seeing through a telescope, first too close, then too far.

That illusion shatters when Exley bucks against his hand, fingers gripping Bud so hard through his shirt that he knows tomorrow he’s going to see the bruises. Then all of it is close, the way that he can see Exley looking down at his hand, faint shimmer of sweat on his hairline, sinner in church style.

Bud’s shed honest Arizona dust from his boots, taken up LA vices again, but hadn’t expected this. To like the result. He’s leaning in, Exley’s bringing him down to kiss again, bite at his mouth as he pushes up into Bud’s hand. Bud takes a breath against Exley’s mouth, gets his hand between Exley’s skin and his waistband, slides down to touch him properly. Doesn’t really know what he expects, what he gets is a cock not unlike his own, and Exley, gasping sharp and hard against his mouth, eyes open, but dark and unfathomable.

Next second, Exley’s got his fingers in Bud’s belt, an impatient practiced pull, and they’re ridiculous like this, a mess of clothes, terrible decisions and Hush Hush material. Bud’s pants are down his thighs, and he’s pushing at them with a nerveless hand, before ducking in uselessly to catch Exley’s mouth. Bud turns in to press his mouth against Exley’s jaw, feels the way that Exley’s breath hitches underneath his skin, an uncertainty that goes unmirrored in his hands. This here, where the clothes come off with a man, this is where Bud stops, and a new world unfolds out. 

Exley does his bit, like a joint interrogation, takes up where Bud left off. Turns them, minimum of fuss, mouth on Bud’s throat, tickle of his lips and tongue pressing against what Bud had been told was his carotid artery, before he bites down hard, decisive. When Exley gets to his knees, Bud just about dies from the shock of it, curls his fingers into the oak of Exley’s table and holds on like he’s the first passenger on the proposed Santa Monica Bullet. Closes his eyes, and tilts his hips, an invitation not an order. If he tried anything else, he’s pretty sure Exley would bite him and file the paperwork as resisting arrest. Behind the darkness of Bud’s eyelids, there’s a sudden impression of light as he squeezes them hard against attempting to see. 

Bud focuses instead on the way that Exley sucks him off, rough and unready, like as much as being a police officer. This is something it seems that Exley’s taken it in his head to do, and do well, without any prior experience, one thing at least he didn’t inherit from his father. There’s nothing practiced about it. Exley chokes, surprised huff of sound, tinged with outrage, tries again, and Bud, dimly driven by some ancient sense of long lost politeness doesn’t fuck his face, a professional courtesy perhaps. Keeps his hands on the table, and rocks a little, feels Exley open his mouth wider, and it feels about as good as sex has ever felt, shockingly so. Perhaps a little more for the tinge of dick-deep fear he feels at the prospect of Exley’s sharp tongue and equally sharp teeth this close.

The room is silent bar the distracting slick sounds of Exley’s mouth, and Bud’s close to the edge, tipping over, half from the feel of it, half from the thought. On instinct, touches Exley’s hair, the smooth sweep of it back from his face, skims along his brow bone, and finally opens his eyes. The sight of Exley’s face wrinkled in concentration, the impossible sight of him swallowing around his dick is a punch to the gut, and Bud comes without warning, would feel worse at shooting into Exley’s mouth, if Exley hadn’t been holding still for it.

Bud feels like he’s been wrung out and left to dry. Exley stands up, unfolding from the floor like he’d never been on his knees at all, and yeah, Bud knows this moment, the space of seconds where just the distance drives a wedge. He’s spent most of his life on the other side of that awkwardness, watching uselessly, never knowing the right way to stop it from existing, the exact second a girl rolled over on her side or lit up a cigarette, drew her knees up to her chest and looked away. The million ways a body could say _what does any of it mean._

It hurts somehow, stupidly, to consider that with Exley. Enough that a clumsy effort is better than no effort. Bud reaches out, tugs Exley closer, hesitates just a second, discovers with surprise that his reluctance to return the favor has more to do with his shot knees than not wanting to do so. Exley seems to get it, pushes in closer, impatiently now the gap has been bridged. Nips at Bud’s mouth, dangerous press of his teeth as Bud jerks him off, gracelessly but efficient. Bud lets Exley push against him, cover him, strokes him through coming, doesn’t hold him exactly, more like lets Exley hold him. It makes sense in his head.

They don’t bother with the pants, just the underwear and Bud should be exhausted, from the drink and blowjob both, but he isn’t, high of it still crawling through him, last shakes of it in his knees as he sits back down at his hand, sweeps the cards up together, looks at the pot. Exley’s taken his tie back, runs it through his fingers speculatively, looks at Bud, slight raise of his eyebrow. And maybe Bud thinks about the kind of solid wooden furniture a man like Edmund Exley might have in his bedroom - how a bed might help a pair of old knees out, and maybe he doesn’t. 

He deals the cards up anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
